What are you looking to design? If you are looking for something simple, a CMS may be the best solution. If you want to learn to code, I have good things about RapidWeaver and Coda. I use Espresso (as I got it through MacHeist) and I quite like it.

I believe sometimes you get what you pay for and I don't have a problem paying for Dreamweaver - just want to be able to find my way around it.

I know a little bit of code by prefer to do drag and drop editing - less code. I think I will try Rapidweaver first since it seems a little simpler then I can always upgrade to Dreamweaver once I'm more comfortable. Maybe by them there will be a new version out...

With RapidWeaver you use templates. It includes some already with it and you can download many free and commercial ones - there are a lot of choices. But in answer to your question - you need to use one of those templates. It is pretty easy to edit the look of existing templates if you want to learn CSS. Later you can simply open the site in another more sophisticated editor like Freeway or Dreamweaver and make changes (but you will no longer be able to edit that site in RW without losing those changes).

you can download a 1 month free trial of dreamweaver mate. google 'dreamweaver trial for mac'
you can find loads of tutorials free on the web/ youtube also. i have downloaded it yesterday and im a total newbie but managing to do what i want to.
when my free trial runs out i am going to try change my ip address and make a new email address and down load it again
dont know if it will work though

when my free trial runs out i am going to try change my ip address and make a new email address and down load it again
dont know if it will work though

The trial has nothing to do with your IP address or your email address. The file you download isn't time limited - you could download it now and install five years from now if you wanted. After you install though, it's limited to the trial length.